Police say someone has broken into the altar at a\u00a0New York\u00a0City church, stole a $2m gold relic and removed the head from a statue of an angel.<\/p>\n
The incident happened between 6.30pm last Thursday and 4pm on Saturday, the police said on Monday, at St Augustine\u2019s Roman Catholic church, known as the \u201cNotre Dame\u201d of Brooklyn\u2019s Park Slope neighborhood.<\/p>\n
The church was closed for construction at the time. Camera recordings from the church\u2019s security system were also stolen, the church\u2019s pastor said.<\/p>\n
The diocese of Brooklyn called it \u201ca brazen crime of disrespect and hate\u201d.<\/p>\n
The diocese said the thief or thieves cut through a metal protective casing, apparently with a specialist saw, and made off with a tabernacle dating to the church\u2019s opening in the 1890s.<\/p>\n
The tabernacle, a box containing holy communion items, was made of 18-carat gold and decorated with jewels, police and the diocese said, and is valued at $2m.<\/p>\n
The diocese said it is irreplaceable because of its historical and artistic value.
\nAccording to a guidebook posted on the church\u2019s website, the tabernacle was built in 1895 and restored in 1952 and 2000.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s described as a \u201cmasterpiece and one of the most expensive tabernacles in the country, guarded by its own security system\u201d, which involves an \u201celectronically operated burglar-proof safe\u201d and one-inch thick steel plates that \u201ccompletely enclose the tabernacle\u201d.<\/p>\n
Angel statues flanking the tabernacle were decapitated and destroyed, the diocese said. A safe in the sacristy, where priests prepare for mass, was also cut open but nothing was inside.<\/p>\n
Holy eucharist, bread consecrated as the body of Christ, was taken from the tabernacle and thrown on the altar.<\/p>\n
Frank Tumino, the pastor of St Augustine said in a statement issued by the diocese, that the incident was devastating, and added: \u201cTo know that a burglar entered the most sacred space of our beautiful Church and took great pains to cut into a security system is a heinous act of disrespect,\u201d Tumino said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police say someone has broken into the altar at a\u00a0New York\u00a0City church, stole a $2m gold relic and removed the head from a statue of an angel. The incident happened between 6.30pm last Thursday and 4pm on Saturday, the police said on Monday, at St Augustine\u2019s Roman Catholic church, known as the \u201cNotre Dame\u201d of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11162,5878,8659,6609,6861,6537,9331,12415,5262,10876,5918,990,1670,11973,237,421,10722,10897,6833,5655,5470,5882,8761],"class_list":["post-22725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-bread","tag-brooklyn","tag-camera","tag-catholic","tag-christianity","tag-church","tag-city","tag-communion","tag-cut","tag-dating","tag-gold","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-one","tag-pastor","tag-police","tag-removed","tag-roman","tag-roman-catholic","tag-security","tag-space","tag-steel","tag-thief"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}